Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes

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[edit] Title

WikiProject Fishes

[edit] Scope

This WikiProject aims to help organise our rapidly growing collection of articles about fish taxa.

[edit] Parentage

This WikiProject is an offshoot of WikiProject Tree of Life:

WikiProject Science.

WikiProject Tree of Life

WikiProject Fishes

[edit] Descendant Wikiprojects

[edit] Related Wikiprojects

It is worth keeping one eye on several Wikiprojects that overlap with this one, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans, Wikipedia:WikiProject Ecoregions, and WikiProject Conservation worldwide.

[edit] Associated Portal

The Fish Portal is the associated portal of WikiProject Fishes.

[edit] Participants

Ram-Man
Tkinias
ugen64
Stan
Demi
Dwmartin 06:17, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Enlil Ninlil 05:14, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Neil916 23:24, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Stefan 23 June 2006
MidgleyDJ 24th of June, 2006.
AshLin 25 Jun 06. Interested but new to fishes.
Lethargy 26 June 2006.
Nick Thorne 23:29, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Dave Fluri 2006.07.05
Josen 19:22, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Mitternacht90
Kamerad
Renice 19:00, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
User: Jam01 6 August 2006
User: Jimbobalina2005 12 August 2006
Ginkgo100 ^{talk · e@} 20:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Chris_huh 26 August 2006
Jamie|C 19:06, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Axlq 05:03, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
ENeville 16:20, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Richard Barlow 16:39, 31 October 2006 (UTC) (been adding a few articles, thought I'd make myself known)
Paulpro
Jnpet 01:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Melanochromis
Terrapin83 10:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Shrumster 23:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Structure and criteria for inclusion

Articles should normally be about particular taxa. For example:

Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Catfish, Cypriniformes
Family: Gourami, Centrarchidae
Genus: Black bass, Lepomis
Species: Largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides

If a family has only a single genus, the family name should redirect to the article on the genus (e.g., Elassomatidae). If a genus has only a single species, the generic name should redirect to the species (e.g., Centrarchus).

When a genus contains only a small number of similar species, the articles may be combined with the article on the genus (e.g., Crappie, which includes the white crappie, Pomoxis annularis, and the black crappie, P. nigromaculatus.)

[edit] Fish names and article titles

[edit] Common names

Common names should be written in sentence case rather than title case, following normal English usage and that of FishBase. (This contrasts with the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds, which follows ornithologic practice in using title casing for bird common names.) Use, for example, "largemouth bass", not "Largemouth Bass". Note that geographical or personal names which form part of a fish's common name remain capitalized, hence "Guadalupe bass" (in reference to the Guadalupe River in Texas) or "White Cloud Mountain minnow" (in reference to White Cloud Mountain in China).

[edit] Systematic names

Systematic or "scientific" names should be used according to established biological usage. Names of taxa higher than genus should be capitalized and set in roman type (i.e., not italicized). Generic names should be capitalized and italicized. Specific epithets should be italicized but not capitalized. Species should be referred to using their full names, e.g., Xiphophorus hellerii or X. hellerii but never just hellerii. Anglicizations of systematic names are neither italicized nor capitalized (e.g., "the pumpkinseed is a perciform fish").

[edit] Article titles

Article naming for WP:FISH differs, as detailed below, from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna).

Use the common name for any species that satisfies at least one of the following criteria:

1(i) The species has a single common name that is widely used and never used for any other species. While the species in question may have additional common names, those names are rarely used. Example: Greenland halibut.
1(ii) The species has a widely recognised common name that is so rarely applied to other species that confusion as to the subject of the article is unlikely to arise. Example: Guppy.
1(iii) Within the area where the species is endemic and/or of commercial importance, only a single common name is used by the relevant legal, conservation, fisheries or local institutions, even though other common names may exist. Example: Atlantic salmon.
1(iv) The species has a common name that is normally separated from similar common names by use of geographical, descriptive, or other modifications to those names. Once differentiated, these names satisfy criteria i, ii, or iii above. Examples: Shovelnose sturgeon, Little shovelnose sturgeon, False shovelnose sturgeon.

Use the Latin name for any species that fails to satisfy criteria 1(i) to 1(iv), including such situations as the following:

2(i) The same common name is regularly applied to multiple species. Example: Green spotted puffer.
2(ii) There is no single common name used for the species in question. Example: Black widow tetra (a.k.a. Black tetra, Petticoat tetra)
2(iii) The species has different common names in different English-speaking countries. Example Plec (UK), Pleco (US).
2(iv) The species simply has no widely used common name. Example: Dermogenys sumatrana.

Guidelines

Regardless of the title used, all articles should include the scientific name in italics and all significant English common names in bold in the first paragraph (and preferably the first sentence) and in such a way that it clearly differentiates the fish from other species with which it might be confused, for example by mentioning geographical distribution.

The guppy (Poecilia reticulata) also known as the millionsfish, is a small fresh and brackish water fish from Central America.

All reasonable attempts should be made to include disambiguations to species with which the present one might be confused. Disambiguations can be done by explaining the ambiguity in the first paragraph of the article with links to other fish (tilapia) or the addition of a disambiguation tag (freshwater hatchetfish).
The following is a simple format of disambiguation tag.

This article is about the <put text>; for the <put text> see <put link>.

Creation of a disambiguation page especially in the case that the ambiguity involves many fish. Example: tigerfish.
Before renaming articles, discuss the reasons for doing so on the Talk page.
In cases of disputed naming, where a consensus cannot be reached on the articles Talk page, the matter should be discussed at WP:FISH to allow a consensus decision to be reached.

[edit] Higher taxa

Articles on higher taxa should be titled using the common name, if one exists and is unambiguous. Otherwise, the scientific epithet should be used. For example, Micropodia is known commonly and unambiguously as the black basses. The Centrarchidae, however are the sunfishes, which is a term commonly (if loosely) used for a variety of taxa, especially those of genus Lepomis but also of unrelated fishes (see Sunfish). The article is therefore titled using the scientific epithet. When FishBase or other references give a common name of "xes and ys" or "xes or ys" for a higher taxon, the scientific epithet (possibly anglicized) should be used for the article title.

Articles on taxa above the generic level should be titled with the Latin form of the name and not the anglicization, e.g. Cyprinidae not cyprinid, and Perciformes not perciform. The anglicizations may be freely used in article text, however.

[edit] Taxonomy

For the sake of consistency, fish articles should follow FishBase taxonomy. If a taxon's classification is disputed, the article text should explain this.

[edit] Categorization

Wikipedia categories should be created for well-known families, using the plural of the common name of the family (Category:Sunfishes or Category:Cyprinids), and for orders, using the common name (e.g., Category:Catfishes) or the scientific epithet (e.g., Category:Cyprinodontiformes). For very small families (e.g., the pygmy sunfishes), only the order category may be used, but usage must be consistent among members of a family.

[edit] Article format

[edit] Taxoboxes

Warmouth

Conservation status

Secure

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Perciformes
Family:	Centrarchidae
Genus:	Lepomis
Species:	L. gulosus

Binomial name

Lepomis gulosus
(Cuvier, 1829)

All articles on taxa should have taxoboxes (constructed using the taxobox template, not built from scratch) including kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. The new taxa above class should not be indicated, since they can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia. Taxa between class and order should not be used, since they are unstable and can be found in the class and order articles. For large taxa, intermediate classifications may be indicated in the taxobox. For example, Perciformes should indicate their suborder and (if one exists) superfamily, and members of large families should indicate subfamilies. All members of a taxon should, however, be consistent in the usage of intermediate classifications.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage for the full details of taxobox construction.

An example taxobox, for the warmouth (Lepomis gulosus), is given at right. Note that the specific name is L. gulosus, not simply gulosus, and that the generic name is not bolded, since the article is not about the entire species Lepomis.

[edit] Images

An image should be included in the taxobox if an appropriate one is available.

Higher taxa should use images reflecting their types, if possible. For example, Lepomis uses an image of L. auritus, the redbreast sunfish, which is the type species of the genus, while Centrarchidae uses an image of Centrarchus macropterus, the flier, which is the type (and only) species of Centrarchus, the type genus of Centrarchidae.

The taxobox image should ideally picture a single fish, facing left, in a horizontal orientation, cropped to 20 percent of the fish's length around the fish's body, and should be 250 pixels wide. (The image should not be resized manually; the full-size image should be uploaded and markup used to create the 250px image. Note that very large images may be resized before upload so that they will fit in a normal browser window when enlarged.) For articles long enough to warrant inclusion of additional images, these may be placed as thumbnails in the article body, ideally showing the fish in its native environment.

Note that images of fishes which do not possess right-left symmetry should not be flipped to obtain a left-facing fish; doing so would, for example, convert a righteye flounder into a lefteye flounder.

Text captions should not be used on taxobox images in species articles, but in articles on higher taxa, the article caption should indicate the species pictured (if known), in the format "[[Common name]] (''Genus species'')". If the species depicted is not known, the caption should identify the fish as closely as possible, as in "Pygmy sunfish (Elassoma sp.)"

A example size comparison of a whale shark and a human

It is always benefitial to have a picture that communicates a sense of scale. This can be achieved by

placing standard sized physical objects next to the fish (human hand or body, tape measure, etc), before taking the photo. Sometimes the background scenery will already do the job.
painting a measuring scale into an existing image, if you know its exact scale (that's not the same as knowing the average size of the species, btw).
painting a reference shape (human silhouette, etc) into the picture, if your idea about the scale is less accurate.
painting a measuring scale is highly unscientific if it is based on nothing but a guess. In this case you should use the image as it is!

Anyway, any image is better than no image - esp. if you have only third party material available, or if you don't want to get the animal out of its living environment.

[edit] Introduction

The first paragraph should give the common and systematic names of the taxon featured in the article, as well as some information about its classification. Species articles should follow the form:

The foofish (Barus foous) is a species of freshwater fish in the baz family (family Bazidae) of order Quuxiformes. It is native to the Big River basin in Ruritania.

Higher order articles should follow the form:

Barus Linnaeus, 1758, is a genus of freshwater fish in the baz family (family Bazidae) of order Quuxiformes. The type species is the common barfish (B. vulgaris), and fishes of this genus are known as the barfishes.

Succeeding paragraphs should give, in order (omitting paragraphs for which no information is available):

Range or geographic distribution (for higher-order taxa)
Physical description, including size, weight, and age data from FishBase
Habitat, diet, and related information
Importance to humans (aquarium fish, game fish, commercial fishing, research uses, etc.)
Conservation status (if not Secure) for species, including explanation for the classification, and mention of members classified as Vulnerable or worse for higher taxa
Other noteworthy information (life-cycle, breeding, etc.)
Trivia (state fish, national emblem, ships bearing the name, other uses of the name, etc.)
Etymology of name (especially for genus names, which FishBase normally provides), alternate common names, important binomial synonyms, etc.

[edit] Other sections

Information on keeping fish in an aquarium should be put in a section entitled "In the aquarium". Breeding and dietary information pertaining to captive fish should go here, rather than in the main section, which should refer primarily to the fish in its natural habitat.

Other sections may address topics of interest warranting discussion longer than a brief paragraph.

[edit] References

Every article should include a section entitled "References", with a bullet-list of sources. Every article should include a citation there of the relevant entries in FishBase and, if possible, ITIS. It is not necessary to include Fishes of the World unless it has been used as a source for the article. Other sources for information in the article should be included, following normal citation format.

Templates exist for citing FishBase and ITIS, and these should be used.

[edit] FishBase

For a FishBase entry on an order, use:

{{FishBase order | order = Bariformes | year = YYYY | month = Month}}

For a FishBase entry on a family, use:

{{FishBase family | family = Baridae | year = YYYY | month = Month}}

For a FishBase entry on a genus, use:

For most FishBase entries on species, use:

{{FishBase species | genus = Barus | species = foous | year = YYYY | month = Month}}

For most FishBase entries on subspecies, use:

{{FishBase subspecies | genus = Barus | species = foous | subspecies = subfoous | year = YYYY | month = Month}}

For FishBase entries that are problematic for the above templates, get the numeric ID from their URL and use:

{{FishBase species alt | ID = ???? | taxon = Barus foous foous | year = YYYY | month = Month}}

For all FishBase templates, year and month refer to the FishBase revision consulted, not the date on which you consulted FishBase; the revision can be found from the FishBase home page.

[edit] ITIS

For an ITIS entry, use:

{{ITIS | ID = ????? | taxon = Barus foous | year = YYYY | date = DD Month}}

For the ITIS template, year and date refer to the date on which ITIS was consulted. Date can be in either U.S. or international format, as it will be wikified.

[edit] External links

Web sites or pages not used as sources for the article (except for FishBase and ITIS) should appear in a section entitled "External links" (using the plural even if only one link is present).

[edit] Fish-related templates and categories

[edit] Stub templates

Remember to mark up stub articles with the appropriate stub template at the bottom of the article. This automatically adds it to the appropriate page and inserts the banners to the bottom of the page. Currently there are five stub templates:

Stub name

[edit] Talk pages

Please place {{Fishproject}} at the top of an article's talk page. This will help to direct editors to the WikiProject Fishes main page for guidance.

This is how it will look when it has been added:

This article is part of WikiProject Fishes, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all Fish taxa and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the Portal, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. This project is an offshoot of the WikiProject Tree of Life

[edit] Categories

Please make sure to add articles to the appropriate categories among the ones listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes/Categories. If there are any categories that you think should be created, please request them in the tasklist on this page or on the talk page.

In some cases, there might be more appropriate ways to group articles than categories, such as lists or article series boxes. For more information, see Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes.